


Bayou

by god_of_wine



Category: Buzzfeed Unsolved (Web Series)
Genre: Friends to Lovers, I'm not sorry, M/M, Pining, and is therefore a complete mess, best friends being best idiots, this whole thing is one big unnecessary ryan-style overreactiion, though i am a little
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-04-30
Updated: 2020-04-30
Packaged: 2021-03-01 23:14:18
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,956
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23595154
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/god_of_wine/pseuds/god_of_wine
Summary: “Y’know, this feels like one of those cliché movie moments,” Shane huffed a soft laugh, damp fingers raking back the pieces of hair that had begun to plaster themselves to his forehead. He opened his eyes, looking sideways at Ryan through droplet-speckled glasses. “You showin’ up at my door in the middle of the night in your sweats demanding we go stand in the rain. In a movie we’d be making grand proclamations and smoochin’ by now.”
Relationships: Ryan Bergara & Shane Madej, Ryan Bergara/Shane Madej
Comments: 8
Kudos: 95





	Bayou

"I was lost on an escape to love  
Untraceable  
It's not the same,  
Not enough

You and me was like a vivid dream  
Why'd you wake me up?  
Why'd you wake me up?

You were my coming down  
And my solid ground."

\- "Bayou", Mountains of the Moon.

i.

Shane's hands knotted in his collar, in his hair, pulling Ryan hard against his body. Firm, unsteady, collision course.

Shane's Mardi Gras beads pressing into his chest, digging into his collarbone, a little painful. Not quite enough. Press closer.

Shane's short, unruly hair a new level of chaotic, his downturned eyes hooded over, bright, intense, wild. His lips parted, close, far away.

Hot breath against his lips, the smell of bourbon—him or Shane? Both. Nobody laughing, now.

Lips finally on Ryan's, fevered, intent. Bricks scraping against his back through his shirt. He remembers to kiss back, too eager.

Teeth catching at Ryan's lower lip, biting down; he sharply sucks in air. Ryan's nails seeking purchase through Shane's shirt. Do that again.

Lips deliriously hot and damp and there on his jaw, neck, throat. Ryan whines, whispers, pleads—hazy. Please.

Please, please, please.

_What the fuck?_

Ryan had woken up, wickedly hungover and feeling like he had just come out of a long fever, plagued by the remnants of those breathless, crazy, half-lucid dreams. The memories were muddy, hopping haphazardly like small electric shocks from one weirdly intense moment to the next, sensations fragmented and splintered in his mind. He had peeked through his fingers, staring up at the unfamiliarity of the ceiling of the New Orleans hotel room, the faint noise of the world outside the room not quite enough to drown out the sound of sleep-steady breathing from the other bed. Ryan shuttered his fingers again, blocking out the light, the room, and (hopefully) everything in general.

What the _actual_ fuck?

Had it been a dream? He let himself linger over his mental inventory of these broken, electric scenes.

"Ugh, Jesus." Shane's voice was cracked and hoarse, half-muffled by his pillow, and it drew Ryan out of his thoughts and slammed him firmly back into reality. A reality that found his boxers more than a little uncomfortably tight, and oh fuck that wasn't going to help. Oh fuck, oh fuck, oh fuck, oh fuck—"Ry?"

Ryan lowered his hand from his face and opened his mouth to answer, but it took two tries to actually speak. _Think other thoughts, Bergara. Other thoughts. Literally any fucking other thing_. "Y-yeah?"

"You 'wake?"

"Uhhuh." No quip about asking an obvious question.

"Good," Shane huffed a close approximation of a laugh and buried his face in his pillow, raking his fingers back through his spiked-up, birdnest hair. "Please kill me, then."

Ryan squeaked, sitting up in a rush, the sudden movement making a fresh wave of pain shoot through his head and his stomach roll. "What?" Anxiety-fuelled panic mode kicked in hard, singlehandedly strangling any reason that might have remained in his hangover-addled brain. Kill him? Oh, God. It wasn't a dream, it had happened, it had all happened, and Shane was so mortified that he wanted to die. "I am so sorry, Shane, holy fuck—"

Shane drew himself up slowly, balanced precariously on his elbows, looking at Ryan blankly, his eyebrows raised a little. "Ryan, what—"

"About last night, I don't want— _ugh._ I'm sorry, I'm so fucking sorry, I—" Ryan shook his head, heat suffusing his cheeks and spreading down his neck. Having Shane look at him with that utter blankness felt like a vice around his chest, crushing the air from his lungs—he couldn't deal with having this conversation, with Shane doing his stupid Shane-thing and calmly dismissing it all. There would be no drama. Shane wasn't dramatic with people when shit got personal (and fuck him for that, because Ryan couldn't do calm right now if his life depended on it). He needed to stop staring into those eyes, those eyes that had been so close, so intent, so focussed on him. _Nope. No, no, nope, no._ He ripped the blankets off and got up quickly, staggering, almost losing his feet, beelining for the bathroom like his life depended on it. Only when the door was firmly shut and locked behind him did Ryan feel like he could draw something that came close to a full breath, leaning against the vanity like it was the only thing holding him up.

"Ryan?" Shane's voice came through the door after a minute, just on the other side, sounding both vaguely confused and genuinely concerned. "Are you okay?"

Ryan stared at his reflection in the mirror, willing himself not to say a damn word and make this any worse.

"Listen, man. The whole crew went hard last night, we all did stupid shit. It's no big deal, I can guarantee you you've embarrassed yourself more on a shoot."

It was meant to make Ryan laugh, he knew, but he couldn't bring himself to buy into the bit. He didn't feel like laughing, and his mind was running at a million miles an hour. This was it. How on earth could their friendship ever survive drunkenly making out and pawing at each other like fucking teenagers in a fucking French Quarter back alley, for Christ's sake? Would they be able to keep working together? How would they be able to work together after this? Jesus fuck.

There was silence from the other side of the door, and something that sounded like a stifled sigh. "You have no reason to apologize to me, Ry—just pretend it never happened. What happens in Vegas stays in Vegas, right?" A pause, and a soft, half-hearted wheeze. "New Orleans, Vegas of the Bayou. Catchy. Slap that baby on a shirt."

Just pretend it never happened. Ryan frowned at his reflection, his mind turning somersaults. Did that mean that Shane remembered, and just wanted them both to forget it? Did it mean he didn't remember at all? Somehow, either option felt equally crushing. _God fucking damn it, Ryan, you're losing your damn mind!_ He should feel relieved, shouldn't he? He should, but instead his eyes prickled furiously, and in desperation he reached over and yanked the shower faucet on, hiding in the noise.

The thing was, he wasn't sure he wanted to pretend it hadn't happened. He wasn't sure at all.

ii.

It had been a year and a half since they were filming in New Orleans, and Shane, true to his suggestion, had never once brought up, referenced, or even hinted at their indiscretion. Over the months, Ryan had caught himself staring at nothing, wondering about whether Shane's silence was a choice or simply because, for him, nothing existed to bring up, or mention, or fixate on—okay, yeah, Ryan was fixating. He knew he was, he knew he was just digging his own hole deeper and deeper, and pretty soon he wouldn't be able to climb out, even if he wanted to.

Shane’s fingers snapped in front of his face, and Ryan startled back into reality, an inner monologue of curses running through his brain as he realized he’d be zoned out staring at Shane’s hands moving across his keyboard. “Oh, so you are in there somewhere,” came Shane’s smirking voice, piercing through the remaining fog in Ryan’s brain. “Was your Illuminati clone-self malfunctioning? You’ve been staring for a solid ten minutes, man.”

It took every last ounce of willpower Ryan had not to blush, and even then, he wasn’t entirely sure that he managed not to. His face felt unnaturally warm. “I, uh—I’m just tired,” he replied, thanking God that his tongue still remembered how to form words. Sort of. “Sorry.” Something changed in Shane’s expression, almost too subtle to catch if one wasn’t used too staring at Shane’s face—a brief tightening between his eyebrows, the faint tensing of his mouth. It was puzzlement, or concern, or something in between the two, and too late Ryan realized he’d entirely glossed over the Illuminati barb.

“Yeah, man, sure. You’ve been working like a madman,” Shane’s hand clapped his shoulder consolingly, and the breath caught painfully in Ryan’s lungs. “How ‘bout you come over tonight? I propose a Die Hard marathon. Popcorn, beer, ‘yippie ki yay, motherfucker’, all that jazz. Zero work bullshit.”

Spending time in Shane’s apartment sharing a couch and some beers was probably an extraordinarily counterproductive idea in his current mental state, but Ryan found himself eagerly agreeing anyway, because it also sounded like the absolute best idea in his current mental state.

iii.

Ryan had been at Shane’s for a little over two hours—three beers and one Die Hard move down—when the topic of romantic clichés and tropes came up. “Listen, maybe I’m just a romantic, but I love them. The sappier and more cringeworthy the better.”

“Pfft,” Shane made a dismissive noise, wedging his bottle between his thighs so he could flap his hand dismissively, the other engaged in flipping through the Netflix controls. “It’s just sloppy, man. They’re easy outs. Hate ‘em, get rid of ‘em.”

Ryan wished he could drag his eyes away from that bottle, which was beginning to tip precariously back towards Shane’s crotch. _Don’t tip, don’t tip, don’t tip_ —“What, you’ve never wanted to do the dramatic airport love declaration?”

“Hard pass, man.”

“You don’t want to slowly take off your glasses and shake your hair out and have someone realize how drop dead sexy you are?”

Shane paused his Netflix browsing to look over at Ryan sardonically, straightening up. With barely a pause, he worked his hand through his hair and pulled off his glasses slowly, tilting his head and smirking at Ryan. “This doin’ it for ya, baby?”

Well, _Jesus fucking Christ_. That had been a colossal mistake because _fuck yes it_ —“Shut up, Shane.”

The older man laughed, his eyes crinkling up as he slipped his glasses back on, slumping back against the couch dramatically. Which would have been fine, if the movement hadn’t caused the forgotten bottle between his thighs to dip suddenly. The only thing that saved beer from spilling all of Shane’s chinos was Ryan’s hand, darting out and grasping the neck of the bottle at the nick of time. As Ryan sat there, frozen, he was uncomfortably aware that his hand was currently enveloping the neck of the bottle that was uncomfortably close to Shane’s crotch, and the associations his mind leapt to were enough to make him feel like he had short-circuited.

“Shit, that would have been a fuckin’ mess. Thanks, man.” Shane shook with suppressed mirth, his hand closing over Ryan’s on the bottle’s neck, steadying it. Ryan had to jerk back, the feeling of Shane’s hand over his in this context, especially while his laughter was making the bottle just _just so_ —

“Yeah—yeah. Uh, well. Even a fucking squatch like you has gotta love those dramatic makeout scenes in the rain.” Ryan blurted out the first thing (well, the first safe thing) that came to his mind, desperate to distance himself from that mental image and the ghost of Shane’s fingers wrapped around his.

Shane sighed dramatically, returning to his Netflix search as he brought the bottle up to his lips, taking a slow draw before he spoke. Those lips wrapped around the bottle were not helping, fuck you very much, Madej. “I love the rain—I miss it! You Angelinos just don’t appreciate a good torrential downpour.”

Grabbing onto the safest course of conversation, Ryan grinned. “I think it’s supposed to rain next week. Should I pencil you in as calling in sick that day?”

“You know it.” Shane smirked, pulling up the second Die Hard movie. “Ready for a different kind of dramatic airport scene, Ry?”

iv.

A week later, Ryan woke to the sound of rain pounding on his windows. Shane’s voiced echoed in his ears, _I love the rain—I miss it._ His eyes flicked to the clock, 2:12AM. Shane was something of a night owl, but Ryan doubted he was still awake now, and suddenly the idea of Shane missing out on the rain was more than Ryan could bear, picturing those downturned eyes hooded with disappointment for the rest of the day.

He sat up quickly, the bedsheets pooling around his waist, snatching up his phone and hammering out a quick text:

_“Ding ding ding wakey wakey bonestilts, it’s raining!”_

He stared at the screen for a few minutes, waiting for the double checkmark to appear next to his message. Nothing.

_“Hey, longlegs. Not the time to play hard to get.”_

Waiting, waiting. Nothing. Fuck.

Anxiety began to drown out all rational thought (however much rational thought was really present in the wee hours of the morning, anyway), and before he knew what he was doing, Ryan had hit the ‘call’ button, holding the phone up to his ear as he tumbled out of bed. The call went straight to voicemail, and either Shane’s phone was dead, or it was turned off. He pulled a shirt on, adjusting his sweatpants, and tried again. Nothing.

Maybe it was the strain of the last year and a half, maybe it was the pressure he had been under at work, or maybe it was just the early hour, but the idea of Shane missing the stupid rain was too much for Ryan to handle. He tried three more times on the way down to his car, and twice more while he was en route to Shane’s apartment, the rain spattering haphazardly against his windshield. Nothing, nothing, nothing. He parked and dashed to the door of the complex, spattered by heavy droplets, climbing the stairs and reaching Shane’s door. He knocked feverishly, and maybe a little more frantically than necessary.

A few moments passed before he heard awkward shuffling and stifled cursing from the other side of the door. It jerked open to reveal Shane in a t-shirt and boxers (Ryan had to remind himself how to _breathe_ ), his face changing rapidly and almost comically from irritation to surprise to concern as he realized exactly who had been hanging at his door at this ungodly hour. “Ry, Jesus, man, what’s wrong? Are you okay?”

Ryan just grabbed Shane’s arm, steering him back into the apartment and kicking the door shut with his heel. He ignored the taller man’s startled questions and protestations, beelining towards the balcony and throwing the door open, all but dragging the taller man outside.

Shane followed without a struggle in a stunned stupor. Standing on his balcony, he just stared down at Ryan through his hastily-donned glasses, his mouth slightly open, obviously still waking up and trying to grapple with this weird reality he had be thrust unceremoniously into. And, perhaps, facing the uncomfortable thought that his best friend might have finally lost whatever marbles he had left. “Ryan, what the fuck—?”

“It’s raining, Madej!” He declared triumphantly, waving the question away, feeling somehow both wildly exhausted and painfully awake. They both just stared at each other, Ryan effervescent and expectant, grinning like an idiot, Shane dumbfounded and beginning to feel irritated all over again.

“So you’re telling me that you rolled out of bed, drove all the way here without even bothering to get dressed, pounded on my door and woke up me at whatever godforsaken hour this is just so you could drag me out onto my balcony without even giving me a chance to put some fuckin’ pants on because it’s _raining_?” Shane asked slowly, his arms crossed loosely across his chest.

The grin on Ryan’s face slipped little by little as the older man continued to speak, the frantic obsessiveness that had fuelled the better part of the last hour beginning to fade into something more lucid. Shane was used to him being a little crazy, sure, but this was… this was a new level of weird, even for Ryan. “I, uh… I just… yeah,” his voice was small, and he looked away over the balcony railing self-consciously. _You’re a fucking mess, Bergara, holy shit._ “I just—you’re always talking about how much you miss the rain. Last week you said how much you were looking forward to it and I just… I woke up and it was raining and all I could think about was how disappoint you’d be if you missed it—” _And now you’re babbling. Typical, par for the course. Way to go._ “I just got a little obsessive, is all. I’m sorry, Shane, really.”

Shane had let him ramble on, but in the moments after he finally managed to shit his mouth, the taller man had sighed—it was a resigned sound, but also a remarkably fond one. He patted Ryan’s shoulder comfortingly, the touch lingering for just an instant before the hand was withdrawn. “You’re a good friend, Ry,” he said gently, stepping to the balcony railing and resting his forearms against it, letting his loosely upturned palms be spattered with rain. “Yeah, I would’ve been disappointed.”

The ‘friend’ both hurt him and brightened Ryan—that hopelessly painful, confusing dichotomy of the last year and a half—and with better spirits he moved to stand next to Shane, unconsciously mirroring his pose. They stood in silence for what felt like ages, leaning against the balcony railing, heavy raindrops spattering their hands and faces.

“Y’know, this feels like one of those cliché movie moments,” Shane huffed a soft laugh, damp fingers raking back the pieces of hair that had begun to plaster themselves to his forehead. He opened his eyes, looking sideways at Ryan through droplet-speckled glasses. “You showin’ up at my door in the middle of the night in your sweats demanding we go stand in the rain. In a movie we’d be making grand proclamations and smoochin’ by now.”

The words caught Ryan entirely off-guard—well, ‘off-guard’ wasn’t the right phrase, since the idea of kissing Shane was rarely ever far from his thoughts these days and standing this close to him in the middle of the night in the rain certainly hadn’t helped. What had thrown him was the fact that any of that had even connected in Shane’s own mind, and his eyes moved instinctively to meet Shane’s, widening a little.

“I, uh—” Ryan spluttered. _Words, Ryan. Words! Oh my God, this is the time to speak, Bergara! Say something! Anything!_

A few beats of silence, and Shane laughed under his breath again, something just faintly different about the sound than before; a little wry, a little self-deprecating. He looked away again, peering up at the dark sky. “Just a joke, Bergara, relax. I’m not gonna snog you on my balcony, rain or no rain.”

“No, you only do that in alleys in New Orleans.” The words were out of Ryan’s mouth before he could stop them, and, to his horror, they sounded angry. Was he angry? _Oh, shit._

The statement seemed to send a physical jolt through Shane, and he stiffened, his head whipping around to face Ryan again. It might have been a trick of the light, but Ryan though the older man actually looked pale. “I—” Shane began, but faltered, speechless; Ryan could count the number of times he’d ever seen his friend lost for words, and it was wildly unsettling. A heavy silence settled between them, tense and uncomfortable. Until, finally, in a voice that felt too small and strained to ever belong to Shane: “I thought you wanted to forget about that.”

Ryan’s mouth fell open and he stared at the taller man, accusatory. “So you do fucking remember it!”

“I—what—of course!” The exclamation seemed to awaken Shane from whatever stupor he had sunk into, utterly bewildered and defensive. “You seemed like you were about to have a fuckin’ breakdown the next day, you couldn’t even look at me! You locked yourself in the damn bathroom for an hour! I told you were could just pretend it never happened if you wanted, and you just fucking—” His lips pursed together tightly, choking off whatever he had been going to say. He took a slow, controlled breath through his nose, the flash of uncharacteristic temper suppressed into calm coolness once again. “You’re my best friend, Ry. I didn’t want to ruin anything, and if the cost of keeping things okay between us was pretending that I haven’t spent every damn day reliving that night, who was I to say that wasn’t a fair price? Look, I didn’t mean to bring it up again, I don’t want things to be weird with us, ever. Can we just go back to forgetting it?”

Ryan felt like like his brain was melting faster than an icecube in hell, and he opened and closed his mouth several times, grasping for words, for rational thought, for anything at all. The faint tinges of ecstasy were creeping in around the corners of his mind, but he didn’t dare acknowledge them yet—Shane couldn’t possibly mean what Ryan thought he meant. “You think about it?” His voice was pathetically weak, and even more pathetically hopeful.

The older man didn’t seem to hear the hopeful note in his voice, stiffening further, pushing his glasses back up the bridge of his nose with a terseness that he didn’t allow in his voice. “Just let it go, Ryan.”

“Jesus Christ, Shane,” Ryan breathed, the full weight of everything that the other man had said finally crystallizing for him. Shane had thought that Ryan had been actively trying to avoid him, that he’d been upset because of what had happened between them. Shane had completely misinterpreted his panic in the hotel room that morning, had utterly misconstrued him locking himself in the bathroom and refusing to speak—well. Looking back on it, he could hardly blame Shane for thinking the way he had. How could he have possibly thought otherwise? Ryan had hardly been faultless in the assumption department, either.

He turned so that he was facing Shane fully, reaching out to touch his arm tentatively. “I thought that you either didn’t remember or just… didn’t want to remember. Fuck, Shane, I’ve spent the last year and a half fucking torturing myself replaying everything I can remember about that night over and over in my stupid head, too.” He wetted his lips, his fingertips applying unconscious pressure on Shane’s arm. “I can’t let it go. And I—I don’t want to.”

Shane’s tenseness had lessened as Ryan spoke, a hopeful confusion spreading across his face as he looked down at the shorter man. “You’re fucking kidding me.” He half-laughed, the detached defensiveness dissolving into something much more familiar.

Had that been the wrong thing to say? Had he misinterpreted this situation and everything Shane had said all over again? Oh, fuck. “Well, I—if you aren’t—if you don’t want—"

Shane rolled his eyes and reached forward decisively, his hand settling heavily on the side of Ryan’s neck, fingers curling against the nape of his neck, fingertips in his hair. His thumb pressed beneath Ryan’s chin, urging his face to turn up, pressing close to Ryan’s body. “Y’know what, Ry?”

Ryan blinked up at him owlishly, swallowing hard, his mind whirring at a million miles an hour. Was this happening? God, was this another dream? Had his mind finally snapped? _Holy fuck, holy fuck, holy fuck, holy_ —“What?”

“You’re a real fuckin’ idiot.” He declared fondly, and when Ryan’s rain-damp lips parted to shoot back an instinctual retort, Shane bent and kissed him soundly, drowning out the need for any other response at all. 

And for the first time in a year and a half, Ryan’s mind went blissfully still, finally content with reality.


End file.
